Three Dimensional Technology

Bryan Singer was gushing about some in-your-face Smallville corn. "Look at that! Oh, look at the corn." The director of "Superman Returns," wearing plastic 3-D glasses, was sitting in an empty Imax theater at Universal City a few days ago where he saw his own movie in an unexpected way.

Walt Disney is going 3-D on a lot of future films -- and some from its past. The studio announced Tuesday that 3-D versions of the computer-animated tales "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2" would be released Oct. 2 for a two-week run as a double feature. Disney also is preparing a 3-D version of its hand-drawn animated musical "Beauty and the Beast" for release Feb. 12, 2010. With 17 3-D releases in the works through 2012, Disney offered a preview of its lineup at ShoWest in Las Vegas, an annual convention of theater owners.

He's already played the Grinch, and now Jim Carrey is out to ruin Christmas all over again, this time playing Ebenezer Scrooge. Walt Disney Pictures announced Friday that Carrey will play the lead role in the computer-animated, 3-D retelling of "A Christmas Carol," to be directed by Robert Zemeckis. And because Carrey is Carrey, he'll play Scrooge at different ages as well as the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future that haunt Ebenezer and make him rethink his misguided ways.

In an effort to get theater owners to upgrade their technology, Paramount Pictures will pay exhibitors to show its movies in 3-D. The new offer begins with the March 27 release of "Monsters vs. Aliens," said Mark Christiansen, Paramount's executive vice president for operations. The studio is offering a similar incentive for films shown in a digital format, he said. Under Paramount's offer, the studio will help defray the cost of converting at least one digital screen to 3-D. Separately, the studio is offering similar fees to chains that convert at least half their screens to digital.

Academy Award-winning director James Cameron will partner with Interscope Geffen A&M Records (home of Dr. Dre, Eminem, U2, Gwen Stefani, 50 Cent, the Pussycat Dolls and many others) to produce 3-D presentations of music videos, concerts, commercials and stage musicals using the Fusion digital stereo camera system developed by Cameron with Vincent Pace.

Synthonics Inc. in Westlake Village, developer of 3-D Rapid Virtual Reality, has been awarded a patent that includes processes that will be used to transmit 3-D color images across television airwaves. This is the third patent approved for Synthonics in less than a year, and company officials said it arrived just in time for the advent of high-definition television.

Synthonics Technologies in Westlake Village has reached an agreement with the Smithsonian Institution and Centro Alameda, a San Antonio organization devoted to promoting Hispanic culture, to create 3-D digital replicas of historic artifacts that can be displayed or used for research.

The space shuttle Endeavour dipped closer to Earth on Friday to create astonishingly detailed 3-D radar maps of the planet that might one day enable scientists to predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. By retracing its orbital steps and passing over the exact spot two days in a row, the shuttle can use its radar to map the same ground features from slightly different angles and detect changes in terrain as small as half an inch.

Remember the movie "Disclosure," in which Michael Douglas walks into a three-dimensional virtual reality contraption to dig up information on his sinister boss? Bill Jepson, the director of UCLA's urban simulation team, remembers--and snorts at what he considers a crude vision. He may well be entitled to his derision. Jepson, 49, has spent the last three years pioneering a striking three-dimensional computerized map of Los Angeles.

Walt Disney is going 3-D on a lot of future films -- and some from its past. The studio announced Tuesday that 3-D versions of the computer-animated tales "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2" would be released Oct. 2 for a two-week run as a double feature. Disney also is preparing a 3-D version of its hand-drawn animated musical "Beauty and the Beast" for release Feb. 12, 2010. With 17 3-D releases in the works through 2012, Disney offered a preview of its lineup at ShoWest in Las Vegas, an annual convention of theater owners.

As 3-D consultant and visual effects editor for the T. rex chase in "Journey to the Center of the Earth," Ed Marsh helped the filmmakers deal with a worry that most never consider: the physical health of the audience.

J.Walt Adamczyk stands in front of audiences like a symphony conductor, but this graphic and animation designer wields a pen, not a baton. Adamczyk creates paintings and sculptures on a computer pad, projecting 3-D images in a "Spontaneous Fantasia" of alien landscapes, strange oceanic ballets, surreal gardens, psychedelic swirls.

He's already played the Grinch, and now Jim Carrey is out to ruin Christmas all over again, this time playing Ebenezer Scrooge. Walt Disney Pictures announced Friday that Carrey will play the lead role in the computer-animated, 3-D retelling of "A Christmas Carol," to be directed by Robert Zemeckis. And because Carrey is Carrey, he'll play Scrooge at different ages as well as the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future that haunt Ebenezer and make him rethink his misguided ways.

Academy Award-winning director James Cameron will partner with Interscope Geffen A&M Records (home of Dr. Dre, Eminem, U2, Gwen Stefani, 50 Cent, the Pussycat Dolls and many others) to produce 3-D presentations of music videos, concerts, commercials and stage musicals using the Fusion digital stereo camera system developed by Cameron with Vincent Pace.

Bryan Singer was gushing about some in-your-face Smallville corn. "Look at that! Oh, look at the corn." The director of "Superman Returns," wearing plastic 3-D glasses, was sitting in an empty Imax theater at Universal City a few days ago where he saw his own movie in an unexpected way.

Has digital cinema finally found its killer app? Filmless movie projection has been lurking just around the corner for nearly a decade, while movie studios and theater owners have bickered over the cost of scrapping the old projectors and installing the new. Now, for the first time, there's a sign that moviegoers are willing to walk past a conventional movie theater and line up for a digitally projected movie -- at higher ticket prices, yet.

May 10, 1995 | PAOLO PONTONIERE and MARY PURPURA, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

If you saw an ironing board or a pair of blue jeans floating above the sidewalk, you might conclude that you'd been working too hard. But it could be that you'd just encountered novel technology capable of projecting realistic, full-color, 3-D images--with no special glasses required. Known as HDVD, for high-definition volumetric display, the technology relies on a combination of sophisticated computer software and a complicated array of optical filters and lenses to project images into space.

Not long after the invention of photography came stereographs--twin black-and-white images that, when seen through a special viewer, fused into one three-dimensional scene. It was a simple technique but an overwhelmingly popular one, and stereo viewers were common in middle-class American homes by the late 1800s. Things have come a long way since then, of course.

Instantaneous holograms that could pave the way to three-dimensional motion pictures have moved a step closer to reality, scientists say. Researchers at Riso National Laboratory in Denmark say they can create a hologram in only five billionths of a second (instead of several minutes) through a technique that requires no chemical processing and thus is immediately ready for viewing.

Sophie Johnson came all the way from Nottingham, England, only to be scared witless by the "Terminator." The 8-year-old with hearts on her sandals and a face full of freckles emerged from "Terminator 2: 3D," which opened Thursday at Universal Studios, squeezing her father's hand, ready to cry. "It was horrible, Mummy," Sophie told her mother, who was waiting at the attraction's exit. "That thing blew up in my face and felt like it was going to hurt me. There was so much shooting."